Can #Twitter Help Authors Sell More Books?

That’s what the Hachette Book Group is hoping, as this month they will start to sell books directly through Twitter.

Hachette has partnered with Gumroad for the initiate, which begins December 11th with print books available for purchase through tweets from Amanda Palmer (“The Art of Asking”), astronaut Chris Hadfield (“You Are Here”) and The Onion (“The Onion Magazine: Iconic Covers that Transformed an Undeserving World”).

Each of the authors has a large Twitter following and Hachette is hoping the combination of a big name with a big audience will convert to big sales on Twitter.

The technology will be powered by Twitter’s new ‘buy’ button.

“With so much of our book marketing done socially now, in-stream Twitter purchasing is a natural next step,” said Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch. “Gumroad’s success working with music labels and artists to enable sales to fans, and their partnership with Twitter, put them at the forefront of social media commerce.”

If the experiment works Hachette plans to expand the effort to include more authors. Gumroad are bullish that the universal, one-size-fits-all appeal of Twitter will help the project succeed.

“Taylor Swift, you, me, we all get the same Twitter. Same functionality, same font size. That’s what’s so powerful. So why should it be novel to do the same thing in commerce?” said Sahil Lavingia, founder and CEO of Gumroad. “If we’re going to make selling as easy as sharing, everyone needs to have the same experience. In ten years, I don’t think this will be novel at all.”